


Getting There

by CoffeeJay



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Countries Using Human Names, Depression, Everything I touch turns to giripan, Gen, Humor, I decided that this has been sitting in my WIPs for too long so please take it, M/M, Mainly this is about Heracles though, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 12:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14852453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeJay/pseuds/CoffeeJay
Summary: Mornings take a lot out of Heracles.





	Getting There

Before Heracles even opened his eyes, he knew he'd be running on fumes all day.  He could feel it in his soul, in every piece of him, down to his toenails. Sure, on his best days, he was a half-tank kind of guy, but when the work piled up, and his boss breathed a little hotter down his neck, and his relatives were even less cooperative than usual--

Well.  It took the wind out of his sails.  That was nothing new, he considered.  It was not unusual for his metaphorical sails to fail to catch even a wheeze of metaphorical wind.  Why, if he were a boat, he mused, his sail would be riddled with holes. He got the same breeze as everyone else on the pond, but boy was he going nowhere fast.  But, hey, he thought, speed wasn't everything. So maybe it took him a little more gust to get going, and maybe he would never float across the sea of life as quickly as anyone else, but damn it, he was still sailing, and one day, he would get there.  Wherever 'there' was.

If he was floating around with a sieve screwed to his mast, so what?  He wasn't sinking, and that's what mattered.

What else mattered, he wondered?  It was Tuesday. Did Tuesday matter?  Did anything, really? Heracles wasn't entirely sure, but today was Tuesday, and there was a meeting on Tuesday, if his memory served.  It often didn't.

He came to the rather nebulous conclusion that the meeting probably did matter.  Somehow. Hadn't it been only a few days since the last meeting? He had slept through it, of course, but he reasoned that the meetings came so frequently that he was bound to catch something at one of them, even if through his dreams.  Really, it was an offensive amount of meetings. How many meetings could be crammed into one year? What a question, he thought. He supposed that the number of meetings possible per year could be found if one pigeonholed the shortest possible meeting time into every possible subdivision of time--but that assumed, of course, that time meant anything at all.

Time.  He finally let his eyes creak open and slide over to the digital clock on his night table.

8:23 AM.

It had been a long day.

The meeting was scheduled for mid afternoon.  If he started working on getting out of bed that very moment, he figured, he might be able to make it just in time.  There was a lot to be done before then, after all. Getting out of bed, for one. And he knew that unless he wanted to be frowned at more than usual, he probably shouldn't show up in just his boxers, which meant that he needed to get dressed, too. 

He let his head loll to the side and gave his armpit a cursory sniff.  Dear God. A shower, then, as well. This was shaping up to be a bear of a day.

Heracles, however, was a man with his priorities in order.  If there was one thing that had to happen first, it was coffee.

On second thought, he mused, other things had to come before that, like getting out of bed.  What a glorious day it would be when he could devise a way to have his coffee in bed without even having to get up to go make it.  He could move his coffee maker to have a convenient new home on his bedside table--but then he wouldn’t have one in the kitchen, would he?

There was an easy fix for that, though: he could simply buy a second one.  Problem solved.

Except, that would cost money.  

Eugh.  

Money.  He scowled at the thought of his unpaid bills.  Currency was a social construct, anyway. It didn’t mean anything.  His lack of money certainly didn’t say anything about his value as a person, or his ability to function like everybody else--not that he had much of those things, either.

A doubtful sigh escaped him.  At least he would be paid for going to the meeting.  He doubted anyone would even bother attending the silly things if they weren’t offered generous compensation and a nice hotel bed for when--

Oh, here was a stroke of genius.

The bed.  He could just move the bed to the kitchen!  It could fit, right? Or maybe he could just wedge the mattress in there, right next to his coffee maker.  He was pretty sure bed frames were also a social construct, so he’d have no trouble leaving that behind. What was a bed frame when you could just reach up and make fresh coffee without even having to stand up?

...Wait, was his arm long even enough to reach up from the floor to the countertop?  He doubted it.

Damn.  It looked like he’d have to go make it himself after all.

Which meant he still had to get up.  

Tragically, the clock seemed to agree with this observation.  This, Heracles thought, was frankly very rude. Although, he supposed he had just considered replacing his clock with a coffee maker, so the animosity was warranted. 

Hey, maybe if he got a coffee maker with one of those little clocks at the base--

No, no, it was time to get up.  Do it for the coffee. The beans believed in him.  One leg at a time. Were his joints supposed to sound like that?  Clearly, his body resented the motion almost as much as he did. And now the other leg.  Yes, that was it. Such effort. And now he was standing. Walking, even! What a champ!

Before he knew it, there was a happy mug in his hands.  Heracles couldn’t remember the last time coffee had actually made him feel awake, and this fine Tuesday morning did nothing to change that.  It was delicious, sure, but why did he drink it so religiously? The steam rising up from his mug did not at all add to the winds blowing through his metaphorical swiss-cheese energy-sails.  Maybe the warmth did something good for his soul. Maybe the mere idea of coffee gave him motivation to keep doing life. Maybe his ritual coffee drinking was mostly symbolic, in that if he drank coffee, he was at the very least trying to have energy.  It didn’t matter that the stuff hadn’t done anything for him since togas were in fashion. 

Most likely, he thought, he drank as much coffee as he did because he had fallen prey to a terrible addiction.  In his mind, he shrugged. There were certainly worse vices, and he really did enjoy the taste.

But now his coffee was gone, and he was still in his unmentionables, and his odor had by no means improved.  The shower was so far away. Too far, really. Why did he live in such a big house? And, more importantly, could he get away with slapping on some deodorant and calling it a day?

He thought of the previous evening, when he had lain down in the grass only for the cats to start kicking dirt over him in an effort to cover the smell.  That was pretty sad. He didn’t want to disappoint the cats, so he forced himself up. He even put the mug in the sink before starting his slow shuffle to the shower.  Would his victories never end?

Clothes off, water on, soap on skin, shampoo in hair.  Shampoo in eyes. Tears in eyes. Rinse.  _ Rinse.   _ Try that whole soap thing again.  Sing. It was beautiful, he was sure.  Hit that high note. Maybe not. He was done with his shower, anyway, so he supposed it didn’t matter if he stood there for a while longer and let the water pat him on the back.  

Now that the rest of him was clean, though, his mouth tasted awful.  He couldn’t kiss anyone with a mouth like that, so he stepped out of the shower and found a towel and his toothbrush, and soon, he was minty fresh.  He wondered if he would kiss anybody at the meeting with his freshly fresh mouth. 

Probably not, he thought.  Meetings weren’t very romantic.  Maybe after.

He was still naked, though, and that was a problem.  Not a problem for kissing, necessarily, but certainly something his boss wouldn’t agree with in the context of a meeting.  It was tragic. Pants were tragic. The whole world would be at that meeting, legs covered in tragedy and hair. They would sit the whole time.  Nobody would even see their legs. Pants were pointless and tragic. He could wear a towel. People would frown at him. Maybe even people he might want to kiss.

That wouldn’t do.  Pants it was. 

Oh, he was on a roll now.  A shower done, and his teeth brushed, and he was even wearing clothes.  Maybe the coffee had helped, after all. On top of all that, he was even a little ahead of schedule.  What could he do with all this extra time?

Breakfast couldn’t be a bad idea.  And, there were plenty of books on his shelves that he wanted to read, but hadn’t.  Heracles had plenty to do, not to mention all the unfinished art he had sitting in a back room or the work waiting on his desk.

He would do none of those things.  He knew that much. He had the time, but deep down inside, Heracles knew time wasn’t the issue, here.  In light of this knowledge, he dragged himself out the front door and plopped himself down on the grass outside.

The sun was bright and shiny, and it was doing wonders to dry his damp hair.  Ah, the sun. So much energy to do things like dry hair and feed plants and make cats purr and power shadow puppets everywhere.  What an inspiration. Heracles could only dream to have that much energy. It was a shame he wasn’t solar-powered. He could conquer the world like that.

Instead, there he sat, vegetating like the grass beside him.

Something bitter settled in his throat.  He had barely finished his morning routine, and he was already exhausted.  And now he was sitting out in the lawn. It was okay if the cats did that. Heracles, though?  Heracles had a job. He had cats to feed. Coffee to buy. Books to read, even. There was so much to do, and he was doing none of it.  He didn’t have the energy.

He checked his phone.  9:54 AM. Battery, 98%.  He wanted to tell it to quit bragging.  Seven unread messages. That was new. Well, one of them was, at least.  Two were from Sadik. He knew that. He was ignoring him. Four were from his boss.  He was ignoring him, too. It only felt a little petty. His boss was only human, after all.  Heracles would be alive long after the guy’s grandchildren had grandchildren, unless someone managed to find the key to immortality before then.  That would be unfortunate. He wouldn’t be able to count on the average human lifespan to help him ignore his boss, then.

Seven unread messages.  He dared a peek at the preview.  It was Kiku. Kiku was much more pleasant than Sadik or his boss.  Heracles liked Kiku quite a lot. If Kiku liked him, he couldn’t see why, but for whatever reason, Kiku wanted dinner.

After the meeting.

If Heracles didn’t go to the meeting, there was a substantial chance that Kiku would not have dinner with him.  That would be even more tragic than pants. He was already wearing pants, though. All things considered, he was good to go.  His briefcase was even still in the car from where he had left it after the last meeting.

He just had to get up.  The front door was right there.  He could lock it, walk to his car, and go.  If he left right that minute, he could even be early.  His breath was minty fresh. It was simple. He just had to get up.

A minute passed.  All he had to do was get up.  That’s all. Simple. Easy. Get up.  Another minute passed. That sucked. Meetings to attend, people to kiss, and he had wasted another minute attempting to perform photosynthesis.  It wasn’t working. Neither were his attempts at attempting to stand. That sucked. Heracles was pretty sure that meant he sucked, too.

He checked his phone again.  Another new, new message. It was from Kiku again.  Heracles would be at the meeting, right? That was the gist of the message.  Kiku always wrapped his messages in a healthy layer of politeness. They were a lot of effort to parse for the point, sometimes, but they were usually worth the read.  Kiku did the same thing when he spoke. Heracles liked hearing Kiku speak. But why did Kiku have to ask such difficult questions? Not even Heracles knew if Heracles was going to the meeting.  That probably wasn’t an acceptable answer.

Did dinner with Kiku count as a date?  He hadn’t been on a date in a while. His cats were getting worried about him.  He was all dressed up for a date, more or less. If he went to the meeting, he wouldn’t have to get dressed up again in the event that Kiku rescheduled.  Two birds with one stone. His cats would be so proud. 

It was a date.  He texted Kiku and told him so.  Now that Kiku knew it was a date, take that as he would, Heracles felt quite a lot more economic with his energy spending.  Everything he did, he was doing for two occasions. It was like a buy-one get-one sale for getting up in the morning and minty fresh breath.  If he got up now, it would be the same as getting up twice.

Or something.  

He couldn’t overthink it.  He had to strike while the iron was hot.  Stand while the motivation was thick. He shifted.  That wasn’t quite standing, but he was getting there.  He tried again. No luck. Sixth time’s the charm, he thought.  He had already told Kiku he was coming. No turning back. He stood.  He stood! He was standing. It sucked. He was doing it anyway. 

He turned to his door to lock it.  The lights were still on. That didn’t matter much, though.  He had better things to do than to waste another hour going back inside to turn them off.  He had his cats to impress. Priorities. He locked the door and went to his car.

Yes, he had a meeting to attend.  People to kiss, even. He was going.  Not very quickly. Quickly didn’t matter.  He was going. He would get there.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you would be interested in a Kiku-centric counterpart to this fic, or maybe a sequel.  
> Thanks for the read.


End file.
